Some basics for your personal portfolio management

A portfolio is made of all the investment and securities held by an investor. Big investors often hire professionals to manage their portfolios, but for small investors this can be a little bit costly. However, you do not need to loose heart. After reading the step-by-step procedure described in this article, you will be able to manage it yourself. Portfolio management can be divided into three phases.

• Planning
• Implementing
• Controlling

Planning:
As you do in any other business planning, start with determining your investment objectives and goals. Doing this will give you a clear set of requirements and make it easier for you to choose one investment over others. Investment objectives are not limited to deciding how much profit would you like to make? But you should also consider the time and liquidity factors. Also the amount of risk you are ready to undertake. Take all possible scenarios like inflation or some change in laws into consideration. Although you will try your best to pick the most reasonable securities for your portfolio, you need to remember that the realized returns will actually be quite different from the expected risks and returns. So all of your portfolio planning and security selection process should take into account this uncertainty.

Implementing:
After making a decision, based on your investment objectives, expected risk & return, time frame and other factors, the next step is to decide and go for the selected securities. When implementing your investment strategy, you should follow the rule of diversification. A good portfolio needs diversification to counter that “unknown” factor. This diversification can be achieved in local markets or more effectively by exploring global markets. The effectiveness of some portfolio can be judged at any given time by comparing its peak level of expected return to some specific amount of risk.

Controlling:
When you are managing your portfolio, you need to keep a constant check on its performance and market conditions. In most cases you will need to make some changes continuously. All of this can be a challenging task and there is every possibility of some initial decisional errors and failures, but as your experience grow with the passage of time, you will soon find yourself managing all of these departments with ease. Managing your portfolio will not only save some expenses, but it will also bring that independence of controlling the destiny of your investments, yourself.

How Tariff and Non-tariff barriers can affect your exports

Tariff and non-tariff barriers can affect your export business. In most countries, the governments impose these trade barriers and the general purpose behind them is to limit (or sometimes totally ban) the imports of some specific product. By imposing trade barriers, the governments are looking to achieve some or all of these economic targets.

• Encouraging domestic production
• Protecting local employees
• Increasing revenues
• Reducing consumption and reliance on exports

Whether they are able to achieve these targets or not, one thing is for sure, these trade barriers are going to hurt your business, if you are looking to export to that country. Read a little to get an idea of what tariff and non-tariff barriers are.

Tariff:
In simple words, this is the tax imposed on imported goods. In most cases the tax is collected at the moment some shipment arrives at ports. Governments normally force tariffs (or excise duty) to protect local industries and to raise their revenues, although many economists have debated against it. According to them these methods are faulty, because in the end it’s the consumer who suffers at the hand of high prices and inflation. As an exporter you’d be better off going for some country with minimum tariffs because you will loose the low cost advantage once you have to pay these taxes. Tariff allows local manufacturers to offer lower prices as compared to the imported items (still the customers are paying more than what they should be paying for this quality).

Non-Tariff Barriers:
All other restrictions on trade except tariffs are known as non-tariff barriers. These rules, regulations or policies are used for the same purposes (i.e. to restrict imports and protect local industries), however they cannot raise any revenue for the host country. Some of the common non-tariff barriers are quotas, quality standards, complex regulations, import license or import bans.

Both tariff and non-tariff barriers can ultimately hurt the national economy in the longer run, they provide shield to even those under performing industries and manufacturers who are not competitive at all, hence wasting the country resources and hurting consumers. World Trade Organization has been established in order to lower trade barriers all over the world, and to improve transparency and non-discrimination in international trade. 153 members have joined till now, although no member country has shown total commitment in implementing rules and regulations that are decided at various conferences. Still as an international exporter you should try to target those foreign market where imports are not discouraged in government policies.

How much should you spend on marketing your home based business?

How much to spend on marketing, the question often confuses online business owners. There's no doubt that marketing is a necessary expense and not some luxury which only large businesses afford, but businesses with limited funds should be careful when budgeting their marketing campaigns. Also, the cost incurred at marketing will add to the prices of the product, this is another reason to keep a check on your marketing expenditures.

Marketing is not all about spending:
Marketing is normally linked to some expensive crowd-pulling techniques but reality is that marketing success is not always a result of heavy spending. Good results can be achieved by smart planning, selecting your target market wisely, finding low cost mediums to reach these customers, and some effective message which is prepared while keeping in mind the targeted customer's psychology. Huge fund allocation may be helpful but it’s not an alternate to these basics in any case. When choosing your online business, make sure you don’t have to compete with large corporations, right in the beginning.

Avail Low cost tools as much as you can:
While large companies spend hefty amounts on pay per click campaigns and advertisements, you can depend safely on low cost (even free) mediums like blogging, e-mail marketing or submitting into free directories. These resources can take some time in generating results but patience pays in the end. Start from these inexpensive techniques to make your customer's base. Another advantage these mediums have over those advertisements and other expensive mediums is the level of interaction you can have with your customers.

Increase your marketing budget as your business grows:
A positive aspect of internet marketing is that you can start with minimum amount and decide on whether to increase or not, from the response you get. It doesn’t matter which method you are going to use, whether you decide to try some PPC marketing, affiliate marketing, user generated content or hiring some marketing company; you can start from the minimum amount possible. If the results are satisfactory you can increase your spending later on.

The budget required for online business advertisement varies from business to business, depending on the competition, product or services you are offering, and of course your financial capacity. Although excessive spending can hurt the business, but trying to save more by cutting down your marketing expense drastically is not a wise move either. The trick is to maintain a balance between these two extremes.

Guidelines to prepare an effective business message

New technologies, software’s, office tools have made business communication a lot more easier, faster and efficient. Still we do not have such software where all we need to do is to enter the motives and targeted recipients of that message and press "enter", expecting to get an effective message that is clear, concise and right on the money. That's why you must be able to prepare such messages yourself in order to grow, both as a business or an individual. The good thing is, it’s not that hard. You just need to follow these simple steps.

What do you want to convey and to whom?

Business messages are always created for some particular purposes. Some are looking to pursue their readers into making purchases, some messages are of explanatory nature, some are motivational and others are targeted to just providing some information. Just like these unique objectives, every message has its unique audience as well. Your first step is to determine your audience and define the objectives of the message you are going to create. A clear picture of the purpose and the audience will help you in deciding many factors e.g. the language and vocabulary you are going to use, salutations or the medium of delivery. When writing, keep your recipient’s age, education, position or income level in mind and try to address issues that they can relate to.

Convince yourself before trying to convince others:

You need to ask yourself if you are 100% convinced or not? If the answer is no or you are doubtful about that, it means you need to collect more supporting material, facts and figure. Some empty rhetoric without supportive arguments will get you nowhere. Be sure of the authenticity of the facts and figures you are going to quote in your message.

Write, Edit & Re-write until it is readable:

Message should follow a proper format. Starting with salutations, opening notes, presenting your points and then some concluding remarks. Organize your thoughts and try to avoid ambiguity. Use concrete words that do not have double meanings. Don’t use slang in any form of business messages. Once you are done with the writing, read it from a third person’s perspective. Don’t hesitate to edit or re-write it many times. Spelling mistakes or grammatical errors can spoil the message in no time, so spend ample time at proofreading.

Preparing effective business messages is a skill that can be developed like any other skills, all you need to do is remember these key points and practice.